shaunpress wrote:Zero tolerance has been taken out of the Laws of Chess from the 1st July 2014 (you can buy Stewart Reuben a drink next time you see him!).

Oh, that's good news... But, hey, won't zero tolerance return if the Kasparov ticket wins the FIDE election? I ask this because I see Ignatius Leong is part of the Kasparov team and wasn't it he who introduced zero tolerance at the Dresden Olympiad in 2008? And isn't it he who's the battiest of the batty when it comes to FIDE rules?

shaunpress wrote:Zero tolerance has been taken out of the Laws of Chess from the 1st July 2014 (you can buy Stewart Reuben a drink next time you see him!).

Oh, that's good news... But, hey, won't zero tolerance return if the Kasparov ticket wins the FIDE election? I ask this because I see Ignatius Leong is part of the Kasparov team and wasn't it he who introduced zero tolerance at the Dresden Olympiad in 2008? And isn't it he who's the battiest of the batty when it comes to FIDE rules?

I think you know Kasparov better than that, even if Leong doesn't.

Whatever the outcome of the election, Leong's influence is likely to be considerably reduced.

benedgell wrote:Best of luck to Hjorvar, who play for Jutes, today, who needs a win for a GM norm. According to the unofficial list on the website, he's the only person from any of the English teams in with a shout of getting a norm today.

If he wins this will be his final norm and will secure him the Grandmaster title. We are all more nervous than he is!

benedgell wrote:Best of luck to Hjorvar, who play for Jutes, today, who needs a win for a GM norm. According to the unofficial list on the website, he's the only person from any of the English teams in with a shout of getting a norm today.

If he wins this will be his final norm and will secure him the Grandmaster title. We are all more nervous than he is!

I don't understand this norm. He will not have played nine games.

Unless the rules have changed seven round norms have been possible in the European Club Cup for some years

Unless i'm missing something, there hasn't been any obvious change in the relevant regulations post June 2013 (as far as i can see wording has changed from "Continental and World Team Championships" to "World Team and Continental Team Championships" - which removes the potential ambiguity over whether Continental Championships have to be team based, but continues to say nothing about whether the composition of teams has to be nationality based), so if norms from the latest European Club Cup aren't valid then they presumably never have been. Which would invalidate a large number of norms and titles gained over the last few years...

Leonard Barden wrote:Seems like the haul for today will be two draws (Dorrington, Palliser) and 16 defeats. It looked much more promising than that 90 minutes into the session.

Above was the quote from Leonard after the three English teams got battered in the first round of the European Club Cup. I'm wondering if it was these kind of mismatches that led the ECU to want to vary the format of the competition. I read on the ECU web site that the Annual General Assembly of the European Chess Union has just been held in Warsaw.
Apparently one of the action points was that the delegates in principle supported the proposal of the President of the European Chess Union (Danailov) regarding "the necessary changes" (my quotes) in the format of the European Club Cup competition. Danailov proposed to form the so-called "Top League of Europe" for eight teams who would play a Round Robin tournament, while the other teams would play "Euroleague" according to the current system. It was been decided that, after the federations state their opinion, the final version of rules will be adopted at the next General Assembly in Tromso.

Effectively then the equivalent of the footie. The eight teams would the Champions League while everyone else would get dumped into the Europa League.

Chris Rice wrote:
Effectively then the equivalent of the footie. The eight teams would the Champions League while everyone else would get dumped into the Europa League.

The key question would be as to how you determine the top eight. With the mobility of players from one club team to another, the likely top eight in any year is down to the top 8 spenders as much as anything. This can itself vary radically from one year to the next.

Chris Rice wrote:
Effectively then the equivalent of the footie. The eight teams would the Champions League while everyone else would get dumped into the Europa League.

The key question would be as to how you determine the top eight. With the mobility of players from one club team to another, the likely top eight in any year is down to the top 8 spenders as much as anything. This can itself vary radically from one year to the next.

Presumably they'll decide who the top 8 are by average rating after the squads have been submitted.

BUCA has changed its rules to avoid round 1 mismatches. We will have two sections next year: One for Open teams, and one for 2nd, 3rd etc. teams, and 1st teams whose average grade is less than 140. This should split the field roughly in two, which is the aim. Can't really do this for the European Club Cup though.

That's a real shame if true. One of the biggest attractions of the EEC from the punter's point of view was precisely the mismatches in the first round. Terry Chapman came very close indeed to downing Efimenko this time, and I loved playing Dominguez (and would have loved playing Svidler even more if he hadn't ducked me by resting).

Danailov's SUCH a see-you-next-Tuesday. Honestly. Everything he touches he makes worse. I'm not sure he and Topalov are still together, but either way watching Topalov lose the crucial encounter of the whole tournament to Wojtaszek by ineptly overpressing was *such* a pleasure.

I fully agree with you John. The mismatches are what some of the lesser graded teams crave. When else do you get to play a Gelfand on level terms and beat him as Simon Williams did at the previous ECC in Israel.
It is an honour to play these greats and apparently Danailov wants to take away one of the ordinary folk's chances to do so.

Naturally I agree with John and Ihor. Hopefully this won't come about because there will be little interest in actually financing a mini-league of eight teams, and Danailov will wake up to the fact that no one outside these clubs actually gives a monkeys which of them wins, and that much of the money in the present ECC comes largely from the several amateur Clubs who pay entry fees to play in the same event (and hotel bills, much of which also goes to the organisers). Playing one or two rounds against the hoi polloi is an unavoidable part of the deal, I should have thought. It also seems to me that most of the top players surely accept this, and that this is an "ain't broke, don't fix it" situation.